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SternisheFan writes "From the moment Blizzard announced World of Warcraft's fourth expansion, Mists of Pandaria, the company has faced allegations from long-time WoW fans that it was selling out to the youth demographic, aping children's flicks like Kung-Fu Panda in an effort to draw in youngsters. But barely three hours after I started playing the expansion, I had already seen my character pass out drunk—twice—and be accused of complicity in a genocide. So it seems obvious pretty quickly that these worries were unwarranted, and that Blizzard may have even gone out of its way to allay such fears. The latest adventure in the online world of Azeroth is not without cutesy appeal, but it's also rife with the high fantasy melodrama and challenging dungeons that have kept World of Warcraft compelling over the years. If Blizzard aimed to court the youth demographic, then it has done a masterful job of incorporating that audience into its overall vision. Into the Mists Blizzard is still second to none when it comes to world building, and Pandaria's use of vibrant colors and enormous scale often results in incredible scenes that are a joy to look at. This is a particularly impressive feat considering the World of Warcraft framework that the expansion is built on is now eight years old. I remain astounded that Blizzard has managed to keep this game visually appealing so long after its shelf life should have expired. It seems ridiculous that World of Warcraft's visual appeal could be compared in thesame breath to Guild Wars 2, a game that came out in August."Link to Original Source

thomst (1640045) writes "David Kravets of Wired's Threat Level blog reports that Google has clarified its change in policy on automatic takedowns of YouTube videos for copyright infringement. On Wednesday, Thabet Alfishawi, rights management product manager for YouTube, said in a blog post that Google had "improved the algorithms that identify potentially invalid claims. We stop these claims from automatically affecting user videos and place them in a queue to be manually reviewed.” In its clarification, Google now says that videos flagged by its Content ID algorithm will be placed in a queue for "content owners" to review, if they decide to do so. In other words, the "manual review" is entirely optional, and the review, if any, will be done by the "content owner", rather than by Google itself — all of which begs the classic question, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?""Link to Original Source